Chicken Rice Noodles and Philosophical Discussion
by three times over
Summary: Two kids at university take a break for lunch. PG for swarrs.


The genesis of this piece was but a single line: I came up with this one killer sentence about eating noodles, and decided I was going to write an entire story to accommodate it if I had to. Then by the time I reached it I forgot what the sentence was.  
Was much better at writing Dave when I started, probably because his characterisation was actually fresh in my mind. There's nothing in this piece that the rest of the world didn't get to already. Never really decided how familiar they were with each other; the answer should be 'not very', and they just gel extraordinarily well.  
It turns out their canon dynamic is a lot less sarcastic than I've written it? I hope I'm not just channelling Dave and Rose. I don't believe their interactions would play out the same way five years down the line, though.

I think I made a bad decision in cutting up the structure at the end, especially after the intricate crawl of time in the first scene. The rest comes off as blindingly fast because I forgot descriptions (you can tell in the beginning I was making explicit attempts to write descriptions, because I never actually write descriptions). I was starting to get lazy and stressed out about the pacing, really. If anything I feel like it was a bad idea to make the first part as long as it is (my average fic length is well below what I ended up with here), but I decided there was no way I'd be able to scene-switch my way out of it.

Drew on a lot of personal experience by the end. (I'm not Dave.) I have what's probably a very analytical fascination with the sort of emotions that follow here; it's no fun if they're nicely resolved.

Started approx. May 2011, age 16. Big break between reviving and finishing it recently at age 18.

/-/-

* * *

Dave's not wearing his sunglasses. Jade always bugs him about wearing them, so he's relented for today - "and only for lunch," he adds curtly, one hand shading his blood-red eyes.

"Come on, it's not even that bright right now," she insists, rolling her eyes, trying to incite him further. The two of them are walking down a side street; it's nowhere near as suffocating as the main roads, but the footpath still bustles with young adults. Various small-time cafes and boutique shops stretch along the path, one after another, right down to the foot of the gentle slope. "How can you not even be used to the sun anymore? Those sunglasses are a big, grey ornery _cloud_ over your enjoyment of outdoor life."

"You mean _shadow_," he offers, not missing a beat.

"Shit! Yes, I mean shadow. _No that's not an excuse to put them back on_," Jade growls, trying to swipe them off him. He swaps them to his other hand, the one furthest away from her.

"Come on, I can't do a CSI impression without the shades."

"You don't _need_ to do CSI!"

"Jade letting a pun like that pass by without sunglasses is an outright travesty. It's like a koala that lost all its trees sitting in the middle of a grassy field starving to death." She eventually gives up, and Dave hangs them back on the collar of his shirt. "You are killing innocent koalas here."

"_So_ not fair! You're not allowed to bring animals into this again." Jade bounces away from him, acting as if she's offended, but then turns around with a triumphant grin. "Oh my god, you're way easier to read without those shades on."

"Everything in that sentence was complete bullshit and I refuse to acknowledge it," Dave says, but he can feel his face trying to pull itself into a laugh. He closes his eyes, breathing deeply. He might be smiling a little. Fuckin' hell.

They've now reached the restaurant they're looking for: _Vietnam Cafe_, a name that certainly presents a mind-bending challenge to anyone trying to discern its ethnical origin, but it's quite renowned in its own underground manner. The food's good, the prices are cheap. All a student asks for, really. Jade's through the door first, disappearing in a swirl of simple but well-loved clothing; he catches the door as it swings closed, letting himself through as well.

The eatery's small, but airy and bright, with large glass windows that relieve the room of any claustrophobia. Splashes of light blue complete the interior, and a number of walls have mountainous landscapes and watercolour carp hanging from them. There's already a couple of people in front of the counter, so Dave joins his companion in the queue.

"You know I was talking to this girl from Australia?" Jade begins as he nears her, and the brief look of disorientation must tell her everything. "Sorry, since you mentioned koalas. Sounded nothing like they do on television."

"Yeah, those koalas, huh?" he responds, taking care to scrutinise the menu rather than peek at her reaction. He hears her snort indignantly. "If you ask me nothing from that continent sounds any less weird than you do."

"Hey, that - that's different. Your accent's pretty dumb too."

"Fuck that, Texas is the shit. If you weren't a total FOB you would be all over it."

"Aww, I ain't FOB! At the least I'm... FOD. One chicken rice noodle soup, please," she chirps to the cashier, who nods and scribbles it down. "You gonna get anything?"

Hmm. "I'll just get some spring rolls," he ventures, picking something at random. The lady writes that down too, and they hand over their cash, heading for a table.

"Let's sit here, I love these seats," Jade gushes, leading Dave to a window spot with some bizarre, knock-off attempt at postmodern chairs. She practically meteors into the nearest one, wriggling herself in with glee. He sits on it hesitantly, common sense telling him a chair can't support his weight if all the legs are on one side. "Anyway, what were we saying?"

"FOD," Dave reminds her, "and what the hell is that. Fresh Off The... oh." The girl laughs and examines the view outside; he watches her stare out the window, facing her from across the table, and it occurs to him just how similar this is to a _date_. He's not sure if that's the message she got. He can probably live with not finding out. She doesn't seem like the romantic type, anyway.

The boy exhales sharply, shaking out blond hair and stupid thoughts, and taps his fingers against the table. "Yeah, anyway, as I was saying. If you're going around coining new terms for the methods you use to smuggle yourself out of your third world mystery island, you are officially missing the point. It's about your apparent inability to recognise my wily Southern charms, which just so you know happen to land me right at the holy summit of Mount Sex Appeal."

"Should I be taking notes on this?"

"Yes, in fact. I cannot recommend enough that you get a pen to do so."

"Well _good thing I have one with me right now!"_ Jade ecstatically proclaims, whipping out a ballpoint pen and notebook.

"Oh my _god_."

"First rule of blending into America! Harbour an insatiable lust for grating nasally accents." Dave tries to give her stonefaced death glares as she actually furiously scrawls into the page. "What else may my Almighty and Generous Informant divulge to me?"

"Well next is that, quite frankly, your fashion sense is not nearly the right amount of eye-obliterating avant-garde. I will kindly grant you a diagram to assist in your education," he declares, taking the pad of paper and sketching the absolute, most hideous amalgamation he can think of. She shouts out Pictionary guesses as he draws it.

The teens' orders are called out from the counter, and Jade volunteers to get it, stopping halfway through the addition of her own details. Dave picks it up and has a close look. It is glorious. Jade is frowning as she returns: "Your spring rolls are basically the nastiest, oi, that much oil should be illegal," she elaborates, upon which Dave shrugs and takes the plate from its tray.

"Probably healthier than anything I eat at home, anyway."

"Oh my god, don't even joke about that," she balks. "Like, you have Sometimes Foods, and then you have this. I like to imagine your diet isn't preparing you for a cardiovascular-blockaged death forty years early."

"Were we _not just talking_ about America, child?" Dave shakes their notebook collaboration purposefully and tries to look disappointed. "This culinary masterpiece is a _culmination_ of the tortured screaming melting pot we call the USA. We take the best from across the world... and add oil to it."

"Did you add oil to petrol?"

"Oh hell yeah, we put oil in petrol. It's like - like... wait." He scowls. There is no suitable route to steer this sentence. When he catches Jade watching him amusedly, he tries to twist his face back into looking aloof.

"Just give up," she smirks, and god her grin is practically splitting her face in half, she is utterly _revelling_ in this - "You can't run from my sniper eyes! I am simply the best there is."

"Yeah well if you'd just - eat your noodles," he splutters, and then sinks into his chair. He doesn't know where his wit went.

Her face is completely lit up in victory. "Okay, _mum_."

"_You're_ the one who told me to eat healthy! You're my mom."

"We can be each other's mums, I'm pretty chill with that." She snaps the chopsticks with practiced ease; they split perfectly in two. "We're pretty hot mums, aren't we, Dave?"

"Hot _mom_, Jade. If you don't say it right, it becomes, I don't know - someone sincerely elucidating on both their hotness and their motherhood, which is something entirely different."

"God, eat your spring rolls!" she laughs, and suddenly he can't help it, he starts to laugh too. "See, I can say that now, because I'm your _mom_," she drawls out, and he lets her have his slow applause.

His chopsticks snap diagonally. "Shit."

"Okay, okay - _okay_," she begins to snort, attempting actual conversation but getting thrown off by his utensil ineptitude. "Okay. I think there are some important things we need to establish in our weird cross-genetic parentage." She curls herself forward, making sure to maintain eye contact, trying to talk and eat at the same time. Noodles slurp up from the bowl through her chopsticks. "Like, wha' ith your rerathionthip to my child? Brother-mother?"

"Delightfully Oedipean," he hears himself comment, and mentally twitches; it's as if Rose put his brain in lockdown and demanded she deliver that line herself. "No, I mean, that sounds about right. And they need to refer to me as that, all the time. Like, even at my funeral. _He was the best brother-mother a child could ask for, second as a mother only to my mother-mother._"

"I need that recorded and laid with a sick beat," Jade declares, slamming down her chopsticks and holding her hands in surrender. "I'm floored."

"Thank you." Damn, these spring rolls really are nasty. He clamps his teeth down on one before he can change his mind. "And forget that, we haven't even knocked a sad little dent into the real issues. The oppressive Western paradigm doesn't allow for our incestuous double-gender romance. What do we do about wills? Birth certificates? _Bringing our child to Chuck-E-Cheese?"_

He feels his throat catch halfway through the sentence, but keeps pushing through as if nothing happened. _Our child._ He prays to whatever deity out there that she doesn't think he's crossed a line.

"To _hell_ with Chuck-E-Cheese! Our child will go wherever they like." Oh, thank god. "We'll become paragons of justice, Dave. Campaigning for Chuck-E-Cheese equality!"

"You just really like saying 'Chuck-E-Cheese', don't you."

"Damn straight."

Jade's gotten back to powering through her noodles - christ, the girl can really eat - so Dave pushes himself to clear one spring roll before resorting to boredly poking them around the plate. He can't say they're _bad_ in themselves; their cholesterol stat is just proving to be more than what even he can handle. She catches onto his ennui and offers a chopstick-ful of noodles to him, which he respectfully declines.

"Order something else," she insists, still nudging the noodles at him in case he changes his mind. "You'll go hungry."

"Nah. On a budget."

"You're not! I'm sure you have like, ten pairs of branded sunglasses squirrelled away in a drawer somewhere." He snorts; he lets her have that victory. He can't bring himself to tell her otherwise. She keeps going: "Calvin Klein underwear just lined up in your wardrobe, am I right?"

"All the way across the closet. Hey, I'll go get a takeaway box for myself," he suddenly deflects, standing up. He feels a small pang of guilt as she watches him go to the front; he thinks she's aware, but she doesn't press the matter.

She's done when he gets back, what the hell. "Okay, pack-pack-pack away your stupid food, and let's go!" she cheers determinedly, like a tiny army officer. He loads the polystyrene carton as slowly as physically possible, assured by the fact she finds it as agonising as he does.

"We've got the rest of the hour, right? What are we even tripping over ourselves to do?" he drily points out, despite the question going against every grain of his being. When she huffs and says "fine, take your time", he slams the rest of his food in his bag at record pace. She glowers at him.

"Okay then, smarty-pants," she challenges him, sticking her tongue out. "Why _are_ we hurrying? Where are we going?"

He scratches the back of his scalp, racking his brain. Hell if that wasn't the right question to level at him if she wanted to make life difficult. He doesn't have a clue what will bore her, but he isn't going to make the mistake of sending the choice back her way. He hazards possibly the worst guess he can make.

"The arcade?"

/-

As soon as they hit the outdoors, Dave whips his sunglasses back onto his face.

"Oh my _god_," Jade groans, "it's been like twenty minutes!"

"Do not touch the beloved union of Strider and Glasses," Dave snootily commands, deftly resisting her new attempts to de-shade him. "The promise was kept, and once the glasses are on, the glasses doth stay. Besides," he continues, now letting his mouth twitch up with smooth arrogance, "I can't be looking uncool in my inevitable victory."

"Hah, you wish!" she grins back at him, and he's glad he made the right choice after all.

/-

Damn her. _Damn_ those sniper eyes.

He considered himself a pretty fine virtuoso at shitty arcade machines, but she is stomping him at this weird Japanese, button-mashing _thing_ - he doesn't know what to call it, little blue-and-orange-haired characters running round antagonising each other. He didn't even let her near the gun games.

Then she insists they play a rhythm game and while he feels pretty bad and tries to convince her to play without him, he finds she's damn good at those too, and they're neck-and-neck til their coins run out.

"Shit!" she suddenly grimaces when she checks her phone. "I've got to get to class like, now. Sorry, man."

"I'll walk you," he blurts, and she gives him a look that's half skeptical and half concerned he has his own life to live. "I've got another hour left to kill."

She seems to accept that reasoning, and they exit the arcade, making their way to her lecture hall.

/-

"You're not going to wait with me til my lecture starts," she smirks, the two of them standing outside her building. "This class is packed! I can barely breathe when it's just me."

"Alright, tragic princess," he scoffs, with a roll of his eyes. "See you, then." As she turns her back to him, he suddenly feels his stomach twist, and he knows he's pushing his luck as he spreads his arms: "Hug?"

"Aww, fine," she jokingly concedes, twisting around again, and he's thrown off by her immediate and powerful embrace. He does his best to rework his own delicate hug in the fleeting time he has. "Well, see you!" she chirps cheerfully, pulling away, leaving behind a rush of space.

He stares at her until she's gone through the doors, the girl not looking back once; and then he wrenches himself from the concrete to rush to his own class.


End file.
